it's mom talk. i've got it down, and if you're a mom, you probably do too. i never spoke mom talk until i became a mom. not unlike any other foreign language, i learned mom talk by becoming emerged in the mom culture. after being a mom for just a short while, i spoke mom talk fluently.
mom talk is spoken one mom to another. the moms are complete strangers with only motherhood in common, or so that's only what we can tell at first. each mom's baby is with them, which is the only reason they speak mom talk to one another. it goes something like this...
me (smiling, with maybe a little giggle at something the child did/said): how old is she?
her: 16 months (chuckle)
me: oh she's adorable. i love her ____ !(shoes/hat/hair/dress/Dora doll) my daughter loves _____ (shoes/hats/hairbows/dresses/Dora dolls), too!
her: thank you. i got it at _____ (big box discount store/chic high-end boutique) how old is your daughter?
me: almost two. getting to be a handful! (ha ha)
her: she's precious. and she looks just like you!
....
and that's how it starts. and you know how it goes.
what amazes me the most about mom talk is how the mom talk conversation can get lengthy and include very personal information. complete strangers have told me their labor story, their child's eating/sleeping schedule, about their sex life-or lack thereof, and those are just a few examples. today, in a mom talk conversation, i learned that this fellow mom had a c-section twice, a uterine rupture once, couldn't breastfeed, nixed the idea of having a third child after having her second boy, and who's husband was such a picky eater that he wouldn't eat anything if it touched another thing on the plate.
and in the same conversation with the same mom, i may have revealed at least that much about myself as well.
it's incredible. there is so much that comes with the gift of motherhood, and mom talk is just a little tiny part of it - often overlooked, but definitely part of the gift. i love it. thank you for this gift, baby hall (and daddy hall?). i look forward to speaking mom talk for the rest of my life.
